So, how should i start... I play ele since the release. After reaching 80 lvl my build was based on cond dmg and signets ... But i found it was kinda boring and decided to change it . I found Fenice build here, which i really liked, so i changed all my equipment, weapons etc to make it work as intended. And it was fun. really fun to play . With party, in dungeons, watching the might stacks, healing ppl in danger, buffing the might to all of the party. And then , BOOM . Here we go Evasive Arcana nerf. I dont understand why it got nerfed THAT much, making it totally useless. Now, im totally confused with what should i do with my ele. TBH i dont wanna grind dungeons again so i could change the gear again for some other build... This patch left me totally broken , what should i do now fellow Ele's? Can anyone give me some viable build that is still working good? Or there isnt any left and i should wait for better times for my Ele ...

So, how should i start... I play ele since the release. After reaching 80 lvl my build was based on cond dmg and signets ... But i found it was kinda boring and decided to change it . I found Fenice build here, which i really liked, so i changed all my equipment, weapons etc to make it work as intended. And it was fun. really fun to play . With party, in dungeons, watching the might stacks, healing ppl in danger, buffing the might to all of the party. And then , BOOM . Here we go Evasive Arcana nerf. I dont understand why it got nerfed THAT much, making it totally useless. Now, im totally confused with what should i do with my ele. TBH i dont wanna grind dungeons again so i could change the gear again for some other build... This patch left me totally broken , what should i do now fellow Ele's? Can anyone give me some viable build that is still working good? Or there isnt any left and i should wait for better times for my Ele ...

I'm with you, I made a D/D build based around aura's and mightstacking, now the stealthnerf to leap finishing in fire fields not granting fire aura to trigger the traits and evasive arcana's nerf. Next to that a whole cleric set with staff on a 0/10/0/30/30 healing support build for dungeons, based ofc, around evasive arcana's blast finishers to give might to the group and heal them nicely. Now both builds are broken and I have no idea what to spec her, got to do 2 dungeons since I hit 80 and now my whole healing set is.... sigh

The only way I can think of speccing my D/D spec now is forcing aura's through signets with written in stone, but that still won't help me with my cleric set. Would like some imput from others as well, thoroughly disheartened by this patch, was having loads of fun on my ele and just spend a load of gold on her to get her 2 full exotic sets >.<

Feel both your pain, elementalist felt in the right place to me. But hey it's their game, and perhaps they didn't intend the blast finishers. I personally thought it added more depth to combat, trying to dodge perfectly and switching attunements very quickly to trigger multiple blasts. As for what builds to go for... D/D aura is still doable but less so with the fire field leap nerf mentioned above. Staff condition builds are still useful, in fact they seem buffed based on blasting staff and the earth CD trait working on Eruption. However, it still has the same drawbacks that every condition build suffers from.

Also, even though they did nerf our healing via blast finishers, the staff healing support build is still very useful. Blast finishers were simply iceing on the cake. They healed for about 60% of switching to water or dodging in water and they required you to dodge into a water field. While I was pretty good at this, I will not deny that needing to dodge into that field takes more concentration than not needing to. After this patch I no longer need to worry about that, and can focus more on dodging towards people who really need it, rather being forced to dodge into my water fields which may or may not be near the people who need it.

TL;DR I don't agree with the EA nerf, and it certainly doesn't help us, but the staff support build is still useful.

after 400h on my ele, i came to the conclusion that staff is the best option in partyplay.
traits 30/20/5/15/0
90% berserkerset with runes of the scholar, the other parts of equip are with +vit (1 ring :3=)
healing is not my strengh for sure, but im pumping shitloads of dmg, had a 16k hit on a arah boss today, ~4-6k autoatk crit average
i always played with this, so im quite familiar with it^^
i dont like dd/sd so much with this spec, since the range is necessary, but i like it^^ and i dont die much, im one of the last persons standing everytime.
BUT i dont pvp with my ele, i take war guard thief or others, but ele sucks in contrast to them

after 400h on my ele, i came to the conclusion that staff is the best option in partyplay.
traits 30/20/5/15/0
90% berserkerset with runes of the scholar, the other parts of equip are with +vit (1 ring :3=)
healing is not my strengh for sure, but im pumping shitloads of dmg, had a 16k hit on a arah boss today, ~4-6k autoatk crit average
i always played with this, so im quite familiar with it^^
i dont like dd/sd so much with this spec, since the range is necessary, but i like it^^ and i dont die much, im one of the last persons standing everytime.
BUT i dont pvp with my ele, i take war guard thief or others, but ele sucks in contrast to them

I'm at 60% crit chance and 75% crit dmg and never ever have I saw 10k crit on my ele let alone 16k

It wasn't intended for the blast finishers to show so we've enjoyed the short period of it. Now back to real life.
In fact I don't see how the changes affected pve that much... the biggest fixes were to mass healing in Wvw and with Evasive for Pvp.
If anything we Eles should've learned to adapt, in game and now with changes.

I wouldn't say Ele support is obsolete, since we still have the most combo fields in the game. But having experienced with the power that is a EA staff support/healing build, any ele support builds feel lacklustre to me right now and hence I won't comment on those --- Not that they're horribad, but they are a lot worse now and I prefer to not talk about it and bring a sad face to myself.

For damage, staff can go fire/air berserker and stay in fire to do optimal damage. If you've spent 30 points in fire and your secondary is in air, it's a damage loss whenever you leave the fire attunement. If you've taken might on fire spell then you can take the sigil of force or accuracy amongst other things instead of sigil of battle.

If you're going fire/earth/condition damage, you can justify going into earth for when ALL of 2,3,4,5 are off CD. It's still a damage loss since you'd be locked out of fire for quite a while, but at least you'd be getting projectile reflect/stun/cripple off for survival and crowd control, and earth 2 + 5 is the closest to "worth while damage" outside of fire when you've invested into condition damage. For that matter, throw down as much combo field as you can within those 15 second, you'd be doing minimal damage in the other attunements anyways, might as well cycle through them all and use up all the none-damage spells before going back to fire.

It's pretty standard, cast lava font off CD, cast meteor shower if there is aoe potential, cast flame burst on CD, use retreat for either an extra fire field or, well, retreat. And auto with fireball. You may want arcane wave/arcane blast/glyph of storm/glyph of lesser elemental in your utility slots for 1. higher damage and 2. something to cast that doesn't waste all your offensive stats and damage uptime when you are locked out of fire.

ez. Spec whatever you want (if you're staff), it doesn't really matter since our traits suck and have little if any synergy (that doesn't require being a gimp, e.g. all signets).

During combat:

Find a warrior and stand 1200 feet/yards/(whatever the stupid scale is) behind it. Don't get any closer because you're a glass cannon without the cannon and weaker than a toddler's turd. Fire off auto attack and either press two buttons whenever they are off CD or alt+tab and find something fun to do on the desktop until the mob with unreasonably high hp decides to die, since you have NO REASON to not be at max range anymore besides rezzing and therefore have no reason to pay attention to most of what is going on. Put down lava font somewhere near the big monster, you can't really tell what's going on because you're so flipping far away and have no reason to get closer, but hopefully the good classes will finish your fields for you and get lots of cool effects like aoe might stacks and aoe swiftness (you know, fun stuff!).

And don't forget to throw out your ELITE Elemental so it can walk 1200 meters or w/e to get one-shot then recharge for 3 minutes.

Everyone has only been talking about "support" elementalist not having an issue... but the problem is that not everyone wants to only play support when playing an elementalist. I personally don't *care*, honestly, that I can let ~everyone else have the combo fields~. I'm sorry, call me a selfish player, but I *liked* it when I could take part in blast finishing in those combo fields. Now I can't, and it's really annoying because I wasn't specced to be a toughness/vit/condition damage boring S/D build that gets his damage nerfed when *anyone* starts bleeding and burning besides me.

Right now, I'm basically doing what CepaCepa mentioned. Taking that power/precision/crit damage to staff and just staying at range. Though I do take the summon weapons. Frostbow and Greatsword. The greatsword's damage has seen a slight jump. It's nice to see at least 3-4k crits again... though I used to be able to do much higher with might stacks...

People are just too upset because of the evasive arcana nerf fix. It was probably the most overpowered trait in the entire game, giving full AOE group heals whenever you wanted, stacking might on everyone to no end? Don't worry about stacking healing power as an ele, if you want to heal your group, all you have to do is call out your water fields and where, and your group should be able to respond with finishers all around. This is why evasive arcana was removed (other than it being a bug), because they want you to work as a team. Honestly i recommend equipping a mix of berserkers and valkyrie gear. Toughness tends to attract mobs so i'm not sure where I stand on it yet.

Trust me EA deserves the nerf. I played around with it for a while and felt the game was on super easy mode for PVE with it. How to cheese the game with 10+ might stacks up all time and how can you be tanking everything and healing back up to full hp without moving around? Try play a class with only one healing skills and feel the difference.

You play ele by communicating with your team now. Previously we could just drop water fields whenever we felt like it and dodge rolled to keep the group at full health all the time. Now you have to communicate and have your team blast finish, etc. It's really horrible what ANET is doing, making it so you have to play as a team to achieve your maximum potential **. I've found that I'm actually enjoying the game alot more now that I don't single handedly do all the combos I want. Even after our nerf, I still think Ele is the strongest dungeon class in the game.

nah, I still don't have to communicate with anyone, at least not in pve. Just lay down fire fields and if the others in the party know how to play they'll finish them. If not then w/e I don't really pay that much attention to what the reset of the party is doing (unless someone goes down, then I run up, start rez, pop mist form if I need to avoid damage while doing so, then fire+4 and double dodge back to max range).

So no worries, bro. Just stand in the back with my staff. No communication necessary.

Location:I've gone to find myself. If I should return before I get back, keep me here!

Guild Tag:[Love]

Server:Blackgate

Posted 20 November 2012 - 07:16 PM

Hit 80 last week, got all my gear to fit EA AoE/Cantrip build (staying mainly in fire and attunement swapping) and I had FUN and felt USEFUL instead of standing their stacking bleed in earth which I was useful at but it was BORING...

Now, I don't want to play my ele until they "fix" this. I hope they reverse some of the changes, especially EA. If they don't, I think i'll move on to different class/game unless I find another build, not one that's ONLY viable, but enjoyable.

Trust me EA deserves the nerf. I played around with it for a while and felt the game was on super easy mode for PVE with it. How to cheese the game with 10+ might stacks up all time and how can you be tanking everything and healing back up to full hp without moving around? Try play a class with only one healing skills and feel the difference.

A lot of things deserve nerfs. Engineer grenades deserves a nerf. Mesmer iWarlock in dungeons deserves a nerf. Anything that is powerful when used right deserves a nerf. And knowing what these skills can do, I definitely agree --- If they're not powerful, we wouldn't be so dependent on them, and hence no complaints. For example, who cares if they nerf fire 5 point minor into oblivion. If I'm going into fire, that 5 point minor is the last thing on my mind, I'd be going down that trait line for other things or the stats alone.

The problem is the degree of the nerf and how sudden it came without prior warning. EA is not an "all or nothing" kind of trait, they should at least give us some buffer time to switch our gears/spec if they want to get rid of a build in their game.

Isms, on 20 November 2012 - 07:01 PM, said:

You play ele by communicating with your team now. Previously we could just drop water fields whenever we felt like it and dodge rolled to keep the group at full health all the time. Now you have to communicate and have your team blast finish, etc. It's really horrible what ANET is doing, making it so you have to play as a team to achieve your maximum potential * *. I've found that I'm actually enjoying the game alot more now that I don't single handedly do all the combos I want. Even after our nerf, I still think Ele is the strongest dungeon class in the game.

Our thief could do blast finishing in my water field. But that requires him moving away from the boss and waste his initiatives on none-buffed heals (2-3K aoe healing with all his initiatives) and sacrifice 20K+ damage. We've done the math, we've done the practice runs, in the end they'd rather have me switch completely to dps with either scepter/focus or dagger/dagger (both of which at least still can provide some might stacks to the melee). Things die faster that way, and we've found other ways to deal with the lack of healing: Geyser is WAY too short and way too small for "team coordination". Healing Rain is on a long CD, and the duration is shorter than ranger spring. The best water field for your group members to blast finish in is now the ranger healing spring, the fact that any ranger regardless of weapon/spec has access to it makes it much more "reliable" than bringing in a support elementalist who needs to constantly switch between weapon set to stay optimal.

From first glance, it seems like they're promoting team play and that it's going in that direction. However, I may argue that I'd remain sceptical of how this nerf on EA alone would contribute to that goal. With pugs, letting them do their own blast finishers may in fact WEAKEN the team play atmosphere, where they'd feel that they have to do everything themselves, and others can't help them much beyond an occasional rez and/or provide a combo field that he may or may not be able/choose to combo with. If I see a regen field and I am not at 100% health, I'll go in. It doesn't even matter whether if the person putting down the field is an npc, a player, or a mob. It feels completely different from when an elementalist rushes towards me to heal me up when I'm running for my life at 10% health, or when a guardian leaps from far away over to my position and immediately cast off shield #5 to save me from a quick zerg death.

Before the changes to EA, I was running a staff support build on 0/10/0/30/30. After the changes, I still run the same with only minor changes to one utility, one trait and the choice of elite (which I probably would have changed regardless of the move they made on EA). I still very much enjoy the build and believe it is effective in a small group setting (eg. dungeons). While I understand a lot of folk using the staff prefer to stand at max range, I'd rather be closer to the fight myself so that I can boon allies and grant them the few auras that I have access to. It actually feels more effective to be at closer range than at max range. The difference is that previously we might have used dodges and EA consciously to trigger our own fields, whereas now we're allowing allies to trigger them and using dodges to avoid damage, which was what they were originally made to do.

Everyone has only been talking about "support" elementalist not having an issue... but the problem is that not everyone wants to only play support when playing an elementalist. I personally don't *care*, honestly, that I can let ~everyone else have the combo fields~. I'm sorry, call me a selfish player, but I *liked* it when I could take part in blast finishing in those combo fields. Now I can't, and it's really annoying because I wasn't specced to be a toughness/vit/condition damage boring S/D build that gets his damage nerfed when *anyone* starts bleeding and burning besides me.

Misconception. Damage from bleeds/burns are individually tracked, so you still do your full condition damage (only caveat - burn duration stacks, so you're burn damage is activated when its your turn and burn/bleed caps).